l__________________l
by empty2
Summary: _________________


Smoke. Or so it was. Or was it? What was smoke? Or was there such a need for it? 

Need? Now that's a new concept. What is need? What is want? So many questions. Just what was question? 

A light...a knife. Wow, did it fly. It must have been one of those 'needs' or 'wants'. Were they breaking the smoke? Certainly, there was no need for them. Smoke was everywhere. Smoke was normal. And in that, there was happiness. 

Or was it true happiness? For the light seemed to be an oracle in itself. It was as if the rays were prophesying a reality unknown. Then again, what was reality? What was sensuality...feel....sight....imagination? 

Alas...there was only light. Light...and the touch...the touch of the rough edges. 

Smooth edges at some points, they were, rotating on rough and then back into nonexistence. So, in a sense, it was a plane...a mode of comprehension...a thing to think of. 

Thought....was there such a thing as thought? Only light and touch, but no thought? Certainly, there had to be a correlation. Otherwise, the smoke would never be broken...and so much for the light. 

Blast it!! But the smoke was good, wasn't it?! Just what in the world was going on? Smoke needed no light! Only....only....whatever wasn't light. That's what the smoke needed. But then, how would it be known as to what the smoke needed if there was no light? 

The light...it was like a revolution was starting in the edge of forever. But this edge was not rough or soft...just an edge. An ordinary edge. An ordinary plane. Reality. Thought. 

Rats...how much the smoke was dissipating. It was scary. 

Fright! That was an emotion! A feeling. A thought. A comprehension. The smoke was parting even more. 

Soon, the plane started getting bigger. There were edges, all right. But what were they for? They had something to do with the plane...that's for sure. And the light...was it meant to cast knowledge onto the plane? Was there a relationship here? Plane=Light? A comparison....an contradiction. 

And such wondrous comprehension....my, how the smoke had lessened. 

_Augh!!!_

Now the light was blinding. 

_Ugh!!_

Who said that? 

"Who"? There is more meaning to this plane? Ack! a double plane! There was a reason for the edges, soft or rough. They separated the first plane to another. Two planes...who would have thought? 

There was that blasted "who" again! What was the meaning of that? Was "who" an ally to the light? Was "who" meant to understand the light? Strangely, it may be that this who was built for the smoke. Did whos always live in the dark? 

Whos...so there was more than just one who. There was more than just one smoke...and more than one blinding ray was flying onto the plane....planes. And the edges...they were more than one. But they weren't rough....and they weren't soft. Rather, they were a combination. More than one thing could combine to form another...as a borderline against another plane. So, the edges were rigid...refined...intelligent. 

And behold, there was a third plane. Smoke was nothing. Light was everything. A "who" took on many forms....and part of the form was grappling onto the plane, in all three dimensions. But how? How was that possible? Was the light an explanation? Could the "who" return to the smoke if needed? Impossible, for it had been allied to the light too long! 

Then what did the "who" have to do with the plane? 

Suddenly, there came a dawn. The "who" was all over the plane. In different places. Oh my, there was order to the interaction. The contrast and comparison singled out units....phases in reality...phases in fantasy. 

_Fantasy...._

FLASH! The "who" exploded in thought...five thoughts, to be exact. Each thought rested lightly against the plane. A matter of moments later, they were pressing hard to the solid between the edges. Eventually, the thoughts were discovered to be planes...all in their own. Three dimensions, each of them...although they all shared the same dimensions, to tell the truth. 

And it soon became more than evident that the "who" was a pivotal piece of worth to these little planes...lined up against the large plane. Something odd...did something even odder. The dimensions seemed to rotate, but were still. Something flew out of the bowels of "comprehension". It was immersing...it was transfixing...it was perception. 

Thought and "who" mixed together, and planes sprout out. Many planes....tiny, but all too real. Out into the smokeless light they shot...dark things....thin and flimsy. They were tiny, dark stalks. They were ebony columns of minute structure. 

They were hairs...and out from their bulbous center, there came a pilot for the "who"...a way of gracing the light through faith. An eye was born....and it pivoted down towards the five tiny planes against the large one. 

But now, they weren't just five tiny planes. They belonged to the "who" just as much as the eye and the hairs....the eyelashes....ever did. They were fingers. And what were the fingers holding? What was the plane that they were hugging? The plane that had always existed as long as there was light to shatter the smoke? 

The "who" pondered on this, searing theories through its "thought" and "comprehension", till, without its own knowledge, new and innumerable planes shot forth from the three dimensions and formed a body...and about the body grew an aura of green....a light that reflected off the "who". 

The aura danced about, casting spheres about the growing planes of the stone body. All about, the light became clearer...the comprehension became evident...and a new element, linked to the very "fantasy" that the "who" was so marveled with, grew. It was curiosity. 

And for a split second, the eye flashed off the five fingers against the plane, and at the "who" itself. 

FLASH! 

Clothes...clothes! The green aura had manifested a logic about the body of the "who", and the who knew it. The who was humored...another emotion brought forth from the seemingly widespread death of smoke. The "who" was wearing clothes. 

If this was so evident....the clothes...could not the "who" finally understand the plane in its five fingers? Raging in wishful thinking, the eye flashed back at the plane. What it saw grew an increasing excitement in the soul of the being. 

_Soul...._

The plane was none other than a book. A blank, black book. With as many pages as any blank and meaningless book would need...and with as much a title as it would need to. In other words, there was no title....and there were infinite pages. 

But the "who" needed to know more. It found another arm attached to its body, and opened the book. 

_Action..._

_Movement...._

The first page....was blank. But the "who" was not satisfied, even if the empty page read: 

****************************************************************************** 

_____________________ 

****************************************************************************** 

The book...the system between the planes....had to have meant something. So, the "who" thought hard. Its eye.....no....its EYES, looked hard at the page: 

****************************************************************************** 

_____________________ 

****************************************************************************** 

Even more, the eyes strained. 

****************************************************************************** 

_________-___-___-____

****************************************************************************** 

The "who" reacted in surprise. The page had changed. Just because it had looked at it...and just because it had wanted to. 

****************************************************************************** 

___--__-__-_---__-__-___

****************************************************************************** 

"Go ahead." 

The "who", startled, glanced upward...suddenly giving birth to a new sense: Sound....hearing....ears... 

"Go ahead," repeated the young, wavery voice. "You have control over it." 

The "who" could only look deep into the light for answer. From afar, it thought it could make out the formation of the smoke...hovering in its last spacial retreat. 

"Come now," the surviving smoke chuckled, "...discover air." 

_Air..._

The "who" looked anxiously back at the page. 

****************************************************************************** 

-t t-o- a -r---th of -i-

****************************************************************************** 

Yet still, the "who" strained. It wouldn't give up. 

Finally, the page read: 

****************************************************************************** 

It took a breath of air.

****************************************************************************** 

Immediately, the "who" dropped a book. With a slump, it fell to a giant, ever-expansive plane on its knees and opened a new body part: the mouth. 

"GAAAAHUUUUUGH!!!" it wheezed desperately for breath, its eyes nearly exploding in helplessness. When its energy was finally spent, and its air-supply finally gained, it fell down to the ground, panting heavily. 

_Need..._

Maybe the "who" finally had a grasp as to what "need" was after all. 

"Air is what you need," said the voice. 

The "who" looked over in the direction of the smoke, his lungs heavily rising and falling. 

The smoke chuckled, "You liked it, didn't you? That air?" 

The "who" merely stared at it. 

The smoke stared down at the creature. "Well? Give me a yes or a no!" 

Without thinking, the "who" nodded. 

_Yes_... 

The "who" had stated a positive. Then surely, there had to have been a negative? 

_No..._

Indeed, there was an opposite. There was an order...there was a law. The three planes and three dimensions were under the system of yes and no...right and wrong...and true and false. It became more than evident to the "who" that it may have been learning too much than it wanted to. 

_Want_... 

Was "want" the same thing as "need"? 

"I can see that you're progressed quite far, lad," said the smoke. "You're far faster than others, I must confess. Most learners collapse upon the first sentence. Well...heh heh...you collapsed too, but I see that your collapse is superficial...it's just a step in learning. But for others, it's often a pause for millennia to comprehend what's happening to them. Do you know what I'm saying, lad? About time and all?" 

Swallowing a lump in its throat, the "who" nodded slowly, gazing into the light beyond the smoke. Time was real...it knew for it saw the sudden arrival of the fourth plane...the fourth dimension. Relativity was a funny thing....in that it had to waste its own self to catch up to a soul. 

"If you're so smart, lad, speak to me," the smoke grinned. 

If only "who" could. But could it? Slowly, the young being licked the lips upon its face and uttered the only thing it could think of. It was a selfish thing. But then, just what was "selfishness" to the fleeting creature. 

It spoke, "Who am I?" 

"Such a nice question," said the smoke. "You're smart after all." 

But the "who" didn't stop. "Who am I?" It was intent on getting more knowledge...more comprehension...more thought. Only then could the light be understood....right? Or wrong? Yes? Or no? 

"You really must ask yourself more practical than that," the smoke said haugtily. 

So, in obedience, the "who" thought harder. It was still sprawled out on the ground...the forever plane. Or was it forever? Just an illusion? 

_A fantasy?_

"What am I?" 

"Heh heh heh," the smoke said, clapping its hands. "Bravo. If only you could realize how many answers you could achieve by just reaching for such primitive concepts....like childhood and birth. They've all taken place before this point in time, unless you're not quite the grown man that your looks portray. You're definitely scoring one for logic, if you even know what logic is. But you'll know in only a few seconds....or minutes...or hours...it all matters to you, doesn't it? You govern your time? Only if you know what you are." 

"What am I, then?" asked the "who" or "it", suddenly impatient. 

"Why don't you write it in the book if you're so blasted smart?" barked the smoke, folding his arms and baring a wretched frown. "You still see the book there, don't you? It was you who happened upon it in the first place." 

The "it" looked wearily up at the smoke. Slowly, its eyes glanced over at the fallen book on the ground. Muscles aching, it reached over and grabbed the book with a shaky hand. Slowly, it turned over on its back and opened the book wide, reading its contents. 

****************************************************************************** 

T-e -y-i-- r-s--- t---- -n t-e f-oo-, w-t- r-ali-y -lo-l- -om-n- -o-h-s -t-e-t-on.- A-r- -a- mo-e -h-n - -ca-e- a-d-li-h- -ore -ha- - e--l-t--- t w-s hi- env-ro-me-t..-a-d s-o-l-, h- e-a-nd-t -od-te-ca-.

****************************************************************************** 

The "it" strained its eyes. 

"Come on! You can do better than that!" said the smoke. 

Curiously, the "it" verbally responded. "Who?" 

"You," uttered the smoke in response. 

"Who?" 

"You!" 

"You?" 

"No, you!" 

"..." 

"You..." 

"........me...." 

"Right!" 

".....me..." 

"That's right!" the smoke smiled. 

The "it" thought hard. "Me...," uttered its voice. Was there the same singularity within itself that it once sense when feelings its five fingers against the plane between the edges? 

_The book!_

The "it" looked back at the object in its hands...and the growingly-less blank page before him. It could write the reality, couldn't it? Slowly, before its eyes....slashes of fire flew in from every corner of existence...and stamped hard onto the ivory paper with embers of scalding flame, there burned words...sentences....thought....destiny....: 

****************************************************************************** 

The Hylian rested there on the floor, with reality slowly coming to his attention. Air was more than a scare, and light more than a revolution. It was his environment...and slowly, he learned to mold the clay.

****************************************************************************** 

"AUGH!!" the Hylian uttered and grabbed his skull, hurting in pain. "I...I...I..." 

"You....you...you..," giggled the smoke as he floated gaily about the grounded body of the Hylian young man. 

"I...I....am...," the puzzle in the Hylian's soul started to painfully....agonizingly form together. 

"You are....," the smoke smiled in excitement. 

".......a person," and open popped the eyes of the Hylian in shock. "I....am a person...." 

"More than that, big boy," the smoke chuckled and pointed a steady finger at the person's form. "Take a closer look." 

The Hylian glanced down at himself...saw he was no longer an it..but an adult gentlemen in a green tunic...white pants, and heavy brown boots. Around his back was strung a shield and a sword. He had shape...he had a form. 

"I am a man..," uttered the Hylian. 

"You just hit the arrow on the bulls-eye, my friend!" the smoke laughed. 

The Hylian looked up at him funny, still flat on the ground. "Friend?" 

"Oh no," the smoke chuckled, floating around like a ghoulish child. "Don't tell me you've already grown the emotion of suspicion!" 

"Suspicion?" 

"You know...," the smoke gestured. "...worrying...mistrust...natural paranoia. If you can't learn to master that, you'll never be as strong as you once were...when in fact you were weak. So weak, you took a chance...a chance that cost you your destiny....and landed you right here." 

"Well, where am I?" asked the Hylian, running a hand up to his grounded head...feeling the golden strands of his hair. He had an article of clothing atop his skull. A cap...a green one, no doubt. 

"Where are you?" the smoke gasped. "My oh my....you tell me, courageous one?" 

"I'm lying on the ground," said the Hylian in monotone. 

"You're nowhere if that's what you're thinking," the smoke answered. "Haven't you seen the light? Haven't you felt the planes? Haven't you seen the relative stupidity of lazy time itself?" 

The Hylian looked at the smoke and shook his head gently, "I don't understand..." 

"-Smartest thing you've said yet!" the smoke smiled, lifting a finger up into the air for appraisal of the learning young teenager. "There is nothing that you can understand fully...only things in the line--and sphere--of time that keeps you hungry for more...till soon, you realize that you can't possibly know a thing. So what's the use of trying? It'll only get you somewhere you'll regret. Like this place for instance?" 

"What's so special about here?" the man said, eyeing the void about him. 

The sphere spun around, raising his hands to the non-existant sky. "Oh...this is something very familiar to you, all right. In fact, it's familiar to everyone. To Hylians...to Humans...to Gorons...Sheikah...Gerudo...Zoras...Kokiri...monsters...demons...angels...even God himself." 

"And the goddesses?" the being asked. "What do they know?" 

"Nothing," the smoke whispered, drifting down besides the Hylian's pointed ear. "Just like you know nothing. Cuz....you see, young lad....you are an ignorant people. You say so much of how you want to know one another...how much you want to be peaceful, diplomatic, and friendly...but deep down inside, it's the fears that bind you. And you think about things...about things you wish so many other people could know...but they'd never ask you...not in the way you'd want them to. And they never open your locks...and they never venture into your doors. And in the end, all you can say is time is relative...and their time will never catch up with your time...and your time will not slow down for theirs. Never in a million years...if even your time knows what a million years are...because it's so relative to your bolted walls. And in the end, who's going to write your pages, young Hylian? Certainly not them...it's all up to you. And it stinks, doesn't it? To be all alone...to only have to write your own sagas...your own chapters...and not share them with anyone else. But the truth is, everyone has the same novel going. It's just that, nobody has the chance to see it...because there is no labeling." 

The Hylian just stared at the smoke in awe, "I...I'm afraid I'm still confused." 

"Oh really?" the smoke grinned. "Let me ask you a question for once, Hylian." He took the Hylian's head in his palm and turned it to look at the blank book. "Tell me...if someone lays a book down in the middle of a field...and the book has no name...and the book has no author....and the book has no lines to it....who will read it?" 

Silence. 

The Hylian gulped, "Don't you mean what will read it?" 

The smoke frowned. In liquid evil, its words poured right out of its mouth and at the being. "I was wrong....you're more lost than I can imagine...." 

And suddenly, the smoke was gone. 

The Hylian was lying alone on the ground...his breaths echoing into the endless void. He was so confused. What was real? What was not? For crying out loud, he thought he solved those already! 

Straining for an answer, he realized he had to take whatever he could understand from the smoke's words seriously. And all he knew how to do was.....to keep on writing. 

So he grabbed the blank book, and stared hard at its first page, still... 

****************************************************************************** 

-h -m-ns-u-h- --o- -n-a-s-e-,-h-s-g-u-s-m- -u-d- -o-e- -A-d-i- --r-p-n- -o- -h- -e-l--t-.-.-e-f-u-d-t--a- -e-w-s-a-h-r-- -t-h-a-t- --i-h-m---f----d- -o-p----e-h-- -r--- -p----d-h--s-n-m- -a- -i--k-

****************************************************************************** 

Something came to the Hylian...but he knew he didn't know all yet. He had to finish those lines on the page. He concentrated hard, staring at the book in his hands. A rush of fire flew by his face and onto the paper. He knew right then....that he was writing. 

****************************************************************************** 

The man sought for an answer, his gruesome guide gone. And in groping for the reality...he found that he was a hero at heart, with many friends to put together or do apart. And his name was Link.

****************************************************************************** 

Link gasped out loud. Like lightning, he felt the earth rumble beneath him. The ground exploded in soft, moldy brown soil. And then, like merciless daggers of emerald screams all around him, grass shot up in splendor. 

And he shot up to..sitting up like an exploding spark. He nearly dropped the blank book in his hands. "Zelda!!" He yelled. Panting, his mind exploded more through his mouth, "Saria!! Malon!! Impa!!" 

No longer was his voice echoing...but there was a more ringing sound when he yelled....like a bouncing of chains against tree bark. 

To his shock, he stared straight ahead of him...and then looked up. Right in front of him was a wall...a wall of wood. Yet, it wasn't a wall of wood....but of broken trees. And yet, as broken as the trees were...they formed a solid wall of wood...deku wood... 

_Kokiri Village? No way!_

Link looked around, his sapphire eyes wide in shock. It was then, to his horror, he ended up turning around. Infinite....the chasm was. 

_A chasm?_

Yes, it was a chasm....a ravine of darkness that shot through the plane of ground above and below him. He was sitting right on the ledge of nothingness...and off the edge of the grassy lane was a huge stone wall...unlike the wall of deku/wood/trees. It was like he was in a humongous building...or a giant pit of stone and wood. 

And the trees...my how they danced. Stuck out from everything, even the air itself. Floating trees...how dare Link try to explain it? 

"How long have you been here?" asked a childish voice. 

Link gasped. He attempted to jump up to his feet, but instead of landing back down on solid ground, thanks to gravity, he began to shoot straight up into the air! Or was it down? Whatever direction it was, it was heading straight towards either the infinite darkness above or below. But that never really mattered. And as long as Link cared, the half-forest/cathedral ledge had no left or right. 

Yet still, he managed to grab ahold to the string of a long, weedy root on the grassy ground...if it was the ground or the celing, he wasn't sure. And, turning his head up (or down), he saw her. 

A little child...a Kokiri at that. Floating about easily in front of a window. A window? She was hovering over a ledge on the cathedral side of the environment! Behind her was a giant stain-glass window...which shined in an aura of sunlight that bathed her figure in a deity-like illusion. Her green eyes shown like emerald fire...and her short hair stuck close to her head, unlike her flowing clothes (quite untraditional for an active Kokiri girl) which danced about her graceful, hovering form. 

Link found himself staring at the gothic eternity of the Cathedral, stone wall. He knew what it was, an ultimate opposite to the Kokiri environment he was half-flying in. 

"The temple of time," he uttered. 

"That's where my body is, whether I like it or not," uttered the girl, her voice flying across the darkness and towards Link's figure. 

Link hung (or pulled) hard to the flimsy root in the soil...anchoring his soul in the bubbly air. "Why are you there? If I'm here...er...in what half-looks like your home?" 

"Because it's where you belong," said the girl plainly. "You wrote it that way." 

"I only wrote my name and occupation," Link replied, his brain almost loosening from their sockets in the weightlessness. 

The girl's eyes blinked..like flashing orbs of wonder and innocence, afloat there in the infinitely stretched Temple of Time. "You're a hero, right? You saved the world out there?" 

"Out there?" 

"Outside of the book," she said plainly. 

Link gave her the best look of weirdness he could, having trouble with keeping ahold of the thin root. "So that's what this is all about?" he asked. "The book." 

"Certainly not," she said. 

"How so?" 

"It's about us." 

"Us?" Link asked. "My, you know a lot for a Kokiri girl. How old are you?" 

"Age is insignificant," she replied. "You're as old as your soul thinks before God." 

"And how old are you in such a case?" Link asked, sliding further along the root's length. He grunted in frustation and climbed (or pushed) his way back towards the soil and stem. 

"I'm as old as I need to be," she said. "But still older than you." 

"How long will you stay older than me?" he asked. 

"Time is relative," she blinked in response. "All you need is to write." 

"Write?" 

"And then you'll catch up," she said. 

Link sighed, noticing to his dislike that the root was beginning to grow more..drawing him farther away from the grass and soil (ceiling or ground, he was still not sure). "What if I don't want to catch up?" 

"Then you stay here forever, like me," she said. "I too have made the same mistake as you have." 

"You have?" he asked. 

"Right," she nodded. "Don't you ever ponder, hero of time? If someone leaves a book in the middle of a field...with no name....with no author....and with no lines...who will read it?" 

"Obviously someone stupid as me," the hero of time replied, frustrated with the cursed root. 

"Don't think so lowly of yourself," said the girl. "You have no idea how smart that makes you." 

"Then who is not smart?" Link asked. "Those who refuse to find the book and write?" 

"You'll know far too well in time," the girl said. 

"But I thought time is relative?" 

"Only too some," the girl said, and drew back in the shadows. 

Suddenly, a rumbling could be heard. Link gasped, spinning his eyesight about to see the source of the air tremor. "Wh-what's that?" 

Just then, darkness answered his fears. From the corner of nothingness...an emerald comet came soaring by. It had the power of a million mountains crushing in a caterpillar's mouth. It had the weakness of an egg balancing the cosmos. And it was streaming fiery tears, as it screamed by Link. 

SHHHHHOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!! 

WHAM!!! 

Link tried to yell, but couldn't. His whole world twirled about...and he felt the temple of time half of his environment ripped to shreds. Thunder bellowed beneath his neck...and he twirled off for a thousand miles, before coming to a stop in a lone corner of the forest....facing the comet for who she really was. 

And what he saw, made him gasp. "Saria!" 

She was in tears...floating through the gnarled branches of an endless, two-sided tree. It had leaves on both sides, that tree did...and no roots or mass, so that it floated forever in that pocket of the forest cave. Link no longer saw the dark rift that had separated him and that one girl from touching each other....and the root that he hated so was long gone. 

Now it was only him and Saria....floating throught the branches of this one tree. Why was she crying? 

"Saria!" Link called out. He saw her quick-darting figure ahead, rouncing the trunk of the two-sided, behemoth tree. He decided to follow her. "Saria! Wait up!" he swam after her, rounding the trunk and discovering that she was floating for one edge of the tree...swimming through the leaves. 

"Saria?! Hold on! I'm trying to catch up to you!" 

"No use in dong that, Link," the emerald-haired girl sobbed, her face wet in sorrow. "I-I-I'm too busy..." 

"Too busy?" 

"I have to prim the tree! If only I can find the roots to it!" she wailed, looking around at all the branches and leaves surrounding her as she circled the cylinder of the enigmatic oak. "My goodness, Link...I can't find the roots! Where are the roots?" 

"Saria! Calm down!" Link exclaimed, horrified to see the pain inside his best friend from day one. "How'd you get here? What was the last thing you remember?" 

"The roots, Link!" she only cried back. "I can't prim the tree unless I find the roots!" She cried and swam an arch beneath a large branch and leapt over a smaller one. 

"Saria, the tree is double-sided!" Link replied, following her moves, diving in and out, around the scratch branches and falling leaves that floated like a school of fish around the forest cavity. "You can't find the roots to this tree! It just floats around forever, with no use to itself or anybody!" 

"Just how much do you know, Link?!" Saria sobbed, looking at him and sniffing in sorrow. "I've lived in this forest much longer than you have! I should know a normal tree when I see one!" 

"But Saria, this tree isn't normal!" he exclaimed. "And furthermore...we're not in reality! We can't be! This land...this environment...I don't know what is up or what is down?" 

"Maybe both, Link, did you ever think of that?" Saria cried, tears running from her eyes as her little body swept around a fork in a branch and up alongside the bark of the trunk. Link followed along patiently, finding it a bit difficult to match her grace. "Up is down and right is left," she sobbed. "There's got to be the roots to the problem somewhere in there." 

"Saria...," Link said calmly, swimming alongside her amongst the banches of the two-sided tree. "There is no root if you don't look for reason. Why do you think you have to look for something that doesn't exist?" 

"Because I'm the smart one, Link," Saria sniffed, her tears running freely. "Everyone in the village depends on me. They don't give a darn for what happens to me, as long as I free them. I'm there responsibility, all over this cursed realm. It's only a second that I'll fail them here and have to go somewhere else..." 

"Saria??" Link gasped. "What on earth are you talking about...?" 

Suddenly, the air rumbled. Saria glowed green, and jerked in midfloat. "Oh no...," she uttered. 

"Saria?" 

"Not again," she started to be pulled away from the double oak. 

"Saria!" Link reached for her, but found himself floating away in the solution...drowning in leaves...all around him...swimming into his eyes...clouding his nose. "SARIA!!" 

"No...not again...I'm not ready...the roots..the roots...oh please, no...NOOOOO!!!" the little girl screamed in sobbing agony. FLASH!!! She shot into a comet. Mountains exploded the caterpillar inside out. The egg crumbled and splattered beneath the stars. And Saria, the comet, thundered off into the expanse of forever, off to do another endless deed. 

And Link was left, falling through the leaves. 

OOF! 

He landed hard on a wooden surface. A surface, carved by Kokiri. 

He looked up. It was his room. But up was still down. It couldn't have been his room. 

_Screams_

Instinctively, Link stood up to his feet. Was that a girl crying out in the distance? A woman? A whole family? Surely, it wasn't Saria. She was far too distant for him to comprehend anymore. If she was real to begin with. Or was all of that real? Was he real? 

_The screams continued..._

Link didn't think. He walked. He headed for his door, ducked below it, and emerged from his treehouse. Except, it wasn't his treehouse...but just a wooden balcony on the edge of a rustic solution. A brand new world. 

_Where was he?_

****************************************************************************** 

Next in his discovery, was Link's venture into the horrors of a burned childhood.

****************************************************************************** 

FLASH!!! 

_The words flared on the page of the book._

Link gasped. He was in a cave...except, it wasn't inside. He felt like he was standing on a floating platform, flying through an asteroid field of wood. 

_Wood...everywhere_. 

It was above him...below him...around him. All broken, splintered....and dripping. 

Dripping with what? 

_Screams..._

Link spun around, startled. In the dark brown vision, he managed to spot a shaking effect. Then to his horror, all the wood exploded. 

BOOM! 

He flinched...yet, to his surprise...none of the splinters was hurting him. Everything was floating downside up in a slow...surreal fashion. He found that, by navigating himself right, he could avoid any of the sharp debris...and thus proceed unscathed to.....well...wherever he was going. 

Yet, the further he went, the louder the screams became. It wasn't until he came across a huge, murky cavern within the asteroids of wood that he saw them. Mothers, clutching their babies in hidden corners of invisible houses....suddenly consumed within random intervals by horrendous hands of the village pillagers that struck through the walls from the outer side and strangled the mouths of the innocent. 

Link turned away, tears in his eyes...for it was worse than even that. Shouts of horror and pleads of the molested rung all throughout his universe. Blood flew with the splinters...likewise stuck within the same rift of shuddering time. 

The hero of time turned and walked down a hill of mahogany, seeking down as the answer of his floating fears. It was then that he came across a patch of shadow....and inside it was a tiny figure of porcelain.....a beauty in all her ornate ways...but certain to crack if she stayed there any longer. 

The furthest reality in Link's mind told him one thing....the porcelain doll was actually Impa. 

"Stay back and be quiet," hushed the fragile faerie. "They took my Mommy...now they want me." 

"Impa?" Link breathed in shock, his eyes squinting to try and see her in the collective microcosm of darkness the sage was in. "Is that you? Why are you hiding?" 

"Because I'm small," she shivered, not even looking at him. 

"I didn't ask you 'how'," the hero of time frowned. "I asked you why." 

"Does it really matter?!" she hissed through her porcelain lips. "They'll hear me no matter what the case." 

"Who's after you?" Link asked. 

"The men...the raiders....they want to burn all my family down, but ohhhhh nooo," she smiled...a crack forming under her left eye. "I won't left them. I'll survive." 

"Impa....you're perfectly fine right where you are!" Link said. "Now get up and let me help you out of here!" 

"No! I can't move from this spot!" she shook, another crack forming across her porcelain neck. "As long as I'm hiding and in the dark...I won't be found!" 

"But what about those who care about you, Impa?" Link asked...watching as more cracks itched their ways across her midsection and forearms. "Would you hide from us?" 

"I don't know you...," she shook, hugging her glassy knees. "I don't know anybody...and it just as well should be that way." A crack severed her tongue all but in half on that account. 

"Impa....this makes no sense," he said. "I always pictured you as a tall and brave fighter. You'd never run away from anything! How could you! You were an example! The last of...your.....people...." Just then, it hit Link. No wonder Impa was running so much. She was afraid of fate....the only enemy she could not drive her mighty rapier into someday. Fate would have her someday...the same as fate killed the rest of her family and tore her wooden houses down when she was an infant. 

"Impa....I'm sorry......I should have figured...," Link moaned 

"No one can bother you, Link," she said....now just a living being of cracks. Her skin diminished, and her eyes dissipated as the last uncrumbled piece of her soul uttered, "...after all...if someone lays a book on the ground with no title....no author....and no lines, who will read it?" 

CRASH!!!!! 

Link yelled out and rose his arms to shield himself as the porcelain doll exploded...sending shards and debris everywhere. He expected lacerations....for his body to be severed in twos, threes, and fours by the unending shower of shards. 

Yet...something else struck his skin....something soothing...something...sensual. 

He opened his eyes and looked at his body. What were shards of jutting porcelain had transformed into elegant streams of the softest silk...and they were lightly brushing up against his arms and chest. 

He fingered one scarf of lace and held it up to his nose. Perfume.....an odor of the sweetest and tastiest kind. Like that of all the best flowers combined. 

His tongue accidentally graced the air, and he suddenly became aware of a general taste of honey about the place. Opening his eyes double, he glanced across the place. It was aglow with a romantic magenta hue that enticed his soul, and in the farthest reaches of the marble dwelling place, he could detect the lively dance of candle and torch-light. 

He quite much liked his new locale, and he boldly took a step forward. Soon, he was floating in a heavenly way through the diagonal sea of lace. The very oxygen rushing through his lungs seemed aesthetic...and beauty of an overwhelming sense filled his consciousness. 

****************************************************************************** 

And, for even a brief moment, the lad ventured on the land of pleasure...within which he would see the idol of men's dreams.

****************************************************************************** 

"Come here, boy," spoke the most luscious voice the hero of time had ever come close to comprehending. "If you go any further like the way you are...I won't be able to give you the greatest..." 

Liken unto a drone, Link froze and turned to his left. Something was nagging for him to go on with his diagonal drift towards the right...but he ignored the Good Will. 

He drifted his way through a water fall of rose-colored satin sheets and came upon another veil of endless, white silk. Through it, he could see the distant form of a full-figured, metaphysical woman...reclining on a huge cushion in the center of the magenta atmosphere. 

He came through, and saw her for the first time. 

Veiled pink linen that clung close to her body in a near-transparency, awaited a goddess that fit everything Link could have wished for. She had eyes of amber....skin of caramel smoothness...with a thin and tight waist and long, porcelain legs that played pikaboo among flowing strangs of frilly tendrils that slept on her thighs and flowing sheets of vanilla silk that snaked about the air before coming back to and end at kissing her spotless ankles. 

Link was now a zombie. His heart pounding...he lumbered over by the bed, his eyes sleepily agaze upon her perfection. 

"I've been waiting for you," she breathed. "And only you.....You've come here looking for me, haven't you? All your life...I've been your answer." She sat up, causing the whole world to spin with her. With arms outstretched, she stood up and offered a sumptuous embrace. "Come...and let me complete you for eternity..." 

Link nodded. Helplessly, he shifted forward and cuddled her to his chest in a gentle hold. He felt every curvature and contour of her soft, fragile form press like shuddering feathers into his body...softly sighing in calm passion at their togetherness. 

He cupped her face in his hands and smiled. He wanted to tell her so much....to give her all the words he'd always wanted to give her...ignoring the strong urges and chemicals souring through his sytem. 

But before he could speak, it was she who said, "Leave your friends." 

Link's eyes widened. "Huh?" 

The goddess gave a sensual smile and reiterated, "Give up on the book....it's unlisted anyways. You are me, and I am you....we'll be more than each other for the next round of eternity. Stop your search.....For I am your only answer." 

Link's heart broke in two....for as perfect as this was, he could not give into his most perfect fantasy. "No," he said...roughly breaking away so hard that his arms flashed back and bopped the flowing snakes of silk. "I can't give up on my friends. They're lost and about in this nightmare...and wherever I am..and wherever they are....I must find a path towards freedom!" 

With that, the fires and candles went out. 

"I thought as much," said the woman, holding a hand up to her veil. "You are but what you are....a drone among all men." 

When she removed her veil, Link gasped. 

"Nabooru?!?!" 

"I am a servant to the dark lord, Ganondorf," she hissed with satanic sarcasm. "_I_.....Have to wait forever and set the trap for the princess. I...have to be a freakin' TOOL!" 

FLASH! 

Link gasped as the ribbons of silk suddenly flew at him from nowhere...gripping hard around his arms and wrists. He was stretched out to the limit....so hard that he winced and cried out in pain. "AUGH!!" The luscious world around him melted into a flowing obsidian. The silk and satin turned into hissing adders and barred-toothed tektites. Gerudo herself looked like hatred incarnate. 

"YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE USED, BOY?!?!?!" she screamed, fire rising from her eyes. She threw her arms back and produced two infinitely long scimitars...each of which stretched for miles beyond what the eye could see...and had the doubled edge of a million crying soldier, reaching for a way to escape from the Gerudo lair of the desert. 

"YOU SHALL BE THE AGENT OF THE AIR!!" Nabooru screamed, rising her blades up into the murk of eternity. "LIKE I WAS THE AGENT OF THE AIR OF HATE!!!" 

"NABOORU!!" Link sobbed loud, his hands and feet tied...literally. "I had no idea!! You should have told me you hated being used by Ganondorf so!!" 

"Should have told you?! TOLD YOU?!?!" the monster in her glared. "That was impossible!!!" 

"WHY?!?!" he sobbed, seeing his torment before him. 

She replied, "When a book is laid on the ground...and it has no title...no author...and no lines...who's expected to read it?!?!" And with that, she dove the immortal weapons straight through Link's chest...where they were absorbed into his skin, and melted into his being. 

Blood flew from Link's eyes. He screamed his teeth out. The hairs of his body grew inside out...curdling through his chest cavity and choking his heart. His intestines ripped to shreds from each monochrome strand...and the four corners of his body ripped apart in a crimsone explosion...dragging one of the four separate ventricles of his cardiac past with him. 

SHHOOOOOOMMMMMmmmmm.........and he was one with the soup. In four corners of the world, the quad-dismembered Link swam. He snaked about like an earthworm dying in the sun. He flew past worlds...rivers..mountains.....streams. 

He heard voices. 

_"Daddy's dead."_

_"Let's thank the Lord we made it safe."_

_"If we kill him now, he won't pass away suffering."_

__He saw giggling screams...he heard splashes of the equinox of reason along the central two axes. And, as odd as it was...the pain of his disembowlment and torture had left him...as quickly did his consciousness of Nabooru. 

**"Hey, nincompoop...get up!"**

He was slowly gathering himself...almost as if his four corners were trying to reconstruct his lacerated heart on their own. He could feel the twists and turns in his knuckles...the finely crafted tools of God in his feet. 

**"Did you hear me?!"**

Link smiled...indicating to himself that he had gotten his mouth back. He suddenly found emotions a real thing, and a great piece settled upon him. 

**"Errr....for the last time, ya idiot!"**--WHAP! 

"OOF!" Link fell flat on the stone ground. He opened his eyes, gasped, and shot up straight. 

"You've been lying around while there's still work to be done!" Ruto frowned, floating a few meters across from him inside a huge, cylindrical tunnel. Link glanced about (ignoring the fish princess' sudden appearance) and marveled that he was in a giant library of some sort. 

"Where are we?" Link asked. 

"Heh....some question that is!" Ruto scowled. She back-stroked through the air and made it to a cabinet in the wall, which she opened up and grabbed a couple of levitating books from to flip through. "What we need is answers...not questions! Answers are the ultimate solutions to our mysteries! If you plan to get anywhere in this world...you must have a sure path ahead of you." 

"Speaking of a path," Link twirled 360s, admiring the endless tunne. "What is up or down in this place?" 

"Link...you should know that if a problem like that persists for that much millennia, it is worth letting go," Ruto said, slamming the books back into the cabinet and then gliding across the tunnel to grab more books from the walls' wrap-around bookcases. "Up is as good as down needs it to be. They're only terms, you see. After all, I could be a Hylian...and you could be a fish. But it still doesn't change the fact that I have scales and you have skin. It's not all in the name, believe it or not." 

"I guess that slams the gavel down on taxonomy," Link said, doing loopty-loops playfully in the air. 

Ruto huffed and slammed the book down (or up, whichever you prefer). "Must you be so lazy?" 

"Ruto!" Link chuckled, shrugging as he floated upright (or upleft) to face her. "I don't even know what I'm doing here in the first place! How can I possibly make any progress with anything!" 

"That's what your mother should have said before having you," the princess sighed, floating to where more books and a couple of geographical books were ornately place. 

Link frowned, "I'm not laughing." 

"Laughter is the medicine of fools," Ruto said, spinning a globe and studdying its latitudes (or longitudes). "I intend to make my life worthwhile." 

"Let me guess," Link smirked and lifted a finger. "By working?" 

"Or studying...whatever smooths your dorsals," Ruto said, floating to another level of bookcases. "My life is all about work." 

Link casually floated along with her, "What are you working for?" 

Ruto shook her head, "I never heard anything more foolish...." 

"Well?" Link asked, this time it being HIM who was growing impatient. "What DO you work for, Ruto?" 

Ruto slammed her hands on her hips and glared him in the face, "I work to keep on working, ya brat!" 

"Pardon?" Link asked, his face blank. 

"You heard me," she floated by him towards a cabinet across the inner space of the castle. 

"If you ask me...I fail to...," Link thought how to express it, ".....the 'solution' in that!" 

"Do your own work," Ruto said, scanning through another book and leaning her chin on her fingers in thought. "I'm stuck as it is in my own studies." 

"And just how long will you do this 'studying'?" Link asked. "Till you finish all the books?" 

"Take a good look at each end of the tunnel, brainiac," Ruto sneered. 

Link did. "Okay..." 

"Tell me what you see." 

"Eternity," Link shuddered at the word. 

"Exactly...and that's how long my quest for knowledge will take!" exclaimed the Zora princess. 

Link looked at her, "You'll look through each and every book?" 

"Uh huh...," she half answered her 'nose' in a book. 

His eyes poured sympathy on her as he asked, "Even an unmarked book?" 

At that, the princess laughed. "Of all the silly things," she giggled and looked at him through teary eyes of amusement. "Just think Link...if there's a book with no title...no author...and no lines...who will actually read the thing?! Ha ha ha ha!" 

****************************************************************************** 

The hero found his dear friend lost forever in her own wit.

****************************************************************************** 

Link's heart fell at that. Tears nearly falling from his eyes, he wandered away from the laughing Ruto. 

His journey eventually led him to a dusty door in the side of the tunnel. Floating to it, he opened it and wandered down a dark and stone passageway...till he found a metal door. It took some strength, but with an added flick of the rist...he got the doorknob to turn, and he opened it wide. 

FLASH! 

Light...................................... 

"Ack!" the boy cried and blocked his eyes from what was most likely the sun greeting him directly outside. 

****************************************************************************** 

Despondent for but a second.....he found himself in a familiar domain. 

****************************************************************************** 

Link gasped. 

Lon Lon Ranch! 

Except, there were no fences....just and endless field...with endless horses...and endless peace. His soul suddenly felt twice better, and he stumbled forward over the amber-green grass...gracing the air and warmth of the locale. 

No sooner had he been walking than he heard the same...familiar singing voice. Smiling, he made his way to the center of the field....and alas, there she was by the stables, washing a cloth of some sort in a trough. 

"Hey Malon!" Link cried out and sprinted over by her. She seemed to be ignorning him, but he came upon her anyways. 

"Hey there!" he cried out. "It's good to see you! I need to get us all together...you, me, and the others. Something weird has happened...and I'm trying to figure out where we all are. Cuz, as you must know...this isn't exactly Lon Lon Ranch. Malon?............................Malon?" 

She was still ignoring him...smiling as she continued washing the garment in the trough of liquid. 

Link blinked a few times and then touched her shoulder, "Malon--" 

She turned and wandered off towards a nearby cow, grazing from a bale of hay. It was as if the hero of time was not there at all. 

"Malon?" Link exclaimed, following after her. "Why are you not paying attention to me?" 

Malon knelt down and applied the cloth to a small wound in the cow's leg. It grumbled in protest. "Easy girl," she soothed. "I'm just going to clean your boo boo out." 

"Malon," Link sighed. "I appreciate your kindness for animals and all, but I really think we should be talking about something more important right now....like what the heck's going on here---" 

"Need help with the cow?" asked another girl's voice. 

Link turned and looked. He gasped yet again--it was another Malon. 

"No, I'm fine," said the kneeling Malon. "But you can go and gather water from the pump!" 

"Certainly," nodded duplicate, trotting over happily to where a couple of buckets were resting. 

"What gives?" Link mumbled. 

"Hey there!" 

He turned to see a third Malon interrupt the second one with the buckets. "Need an extra pair of hands carrying those?" she asked. 

"As a matter of fact, I would," replied the second. 

"You're going to the pump, I assume," spoke the third. 

"Correct." 

"Well, let's go then!" 

As they walked off, Link glanced about and got the royal shock of his life. The ranch was literally covered with Malons....all of whom were working about, doing chores, and running the current of the very ranch. 

"This can't be happening...," he shuddered. 

"It's been this way for years," said a rather young voice...hauntingly sounding like a response to his question to the open air. Interested, Link spun about to face whoever it was...and he saw a little red-headed girl tossing seeds to a pen of clucking cuccos. As if feeling his eyes on her back, she spun about...revealing herself to be a ten-year-old Malon. 

"Don't worry," she said. "I'm the only one here who knows..." 

Link stammered, his mind blank. "Knows what?" 

She sighed and looked about, her face a contrasting deadpan of depression to the zombie-ish smiles of her older copies. "....that things here are unhappy....and lonely." 

"Lonely?" Link asked. He glanced about, "How can you be so lonely with so much of yourself to talk to?" 

"No matter how many places you are at the same time...," the girl spoke, "...you're still only you. One entity...one soul...one mind before God." 

"Aye, that is lonely and depressing," Link winced. 

"Indeed," the girl said, bowing her head...then turning back to toss more yellow nubs of seed at the cuccos. 

Link walked over and knelt by her. "Can you tell me something?" He asked. 

She looked innocently at him with her sad, sapphire eyes. "What?" 

Link took a breath and spoke, "Has Malon always been like this? So alone....so cast among herself and her own responsibilities like nothing else in the world cared?" 

"I wish I could answer that....," the girl said, sniffing back a tear. "But I'm so afraid..." 

"Afraid of what?" Link asked, worried. He placed his hands on the girl's shoulders gently. "You can tell me." 

"I would tell you if I could," she said "But the truth is...Malon doesn't know what she's afraid of. That's why she keeps on going....that's why she keeps on smile, and leaving the slate of her life clean for all to see and grin back at." 

"Why....why has she never told me this before?" Link asked, his eyes watering as he drank in the eerie sickness of the psuedo-happy site of the ranch. "Why did she never ask for help..for counsel?" 

"As I said," the girl shuddered, a tear coming loose but her face staying stone-still. "She's kept herself a clean slate...and you know how that is." 

"How?" Link asked, his voice shaking. 

The girl paused. She then reached into her bag of seed and held out a fist-full of kernels. "When one's life book is nameless...with no author...and with no lines of interest in it...who's expected to read it?" She released the seed...but as they fell onto the earth....they started smoking. 

Link gasped and jumped up to his feet.....startled....his bulging eyes locked on the smoking seeds.... 

The ghost of the girl spoke through the rising ash, "...all that's left to do is blaze on....." 

Link stumbled back as a literal wall of smoke began to form from where the seeds had fallen. Before his eyes, Lon Lon Ranch was incircled by murk. The sky and land turned blood-red, and the smoke turned to fire. Comets of heat fell from the sky...singeing the dirt in various places and forming potholes of blaze. 

Link ran through it all, like a scared little animal..trying to avoid the burns. 

******************************************************************************  
As a taste of his own kind, he managed to see the land of Hell on earth. 

****************************************************************************** 

He sweat...his breath an intermittent pant. The harder his boots plowed into the ground at his speed, the harder it was to contain the pain...for the ground became near-solid and stony...with jutting edges here and there that harassed his contentment. 

It was then that he realized he wasn't the only one running. He sensed souls...hundreds of them...running with him...screaming age-old torment...and begging for future-old mercy. 

Sure enough...when looking to his left and right, he saw women and children...men and fathers...clothed in the same crimson as the world around them...running from innumerable horrors. Some of the comets from the sky landed and absorbed them. Some of them fell into invisible ravines...falling and screaming forever into the obsidian darkness. 

Suddenly, Link himself fell. He tumbled hard over a stone incline....cutting himself on unseen shards of rock as he finally came to a stop on a ledge overlooking a small dip in two hills. He groaned, stirring to get up on his knees...but at the sound of a scream, he froze and flattened himself on the ledge...looking out and over. 

He saw something of a strange site...a legion of demons and monsters settling down within the crimson glow of the nearby valley. Fires all about them, they huddled together in a posse...hooting and hollering their many, indiscriminate war cries of hatred and abomination. One of them carried a sack, and out from it was dumped the body of a wringing man in bondage by numerous ropes. 

Link gasped...for it was none other than Rauru who was the victim. 

The demons danced about him, kicking him with spicked hooves and making his wrinkled skin bleed as he cried out. A bald-headed demon limboed before the others, opening his barred moth wide and flaming about his eyes in ultimate bloodlust before turning around and pouncing violently on Rauru's body...being cheered on by his companion's cackles and humored screams. 

Link couldn't bare to watch. Hopeless from his position, he turned away as his pointed ears graced the sounds of the hungry demons and Rauru's body being hacked apart. When all was horrificaly said and done, the fluttering of wings could be heard...and the location returned back to its rumbling ambiance of surrounding blazes. 

Tears flowing, Link glanced up. What was left of Rauru was a puddle of blood and leftover parts. It all seemed to so wrong. Strange enough, Link stood himself up and slowly descended the hill from the ledge where he was hiding. 

Soon, he was standing in the very same puddle that was once the light sage. To the hero of time's disgust...the organs, intestines, and vessels of the elderly Hylian were strewn everywhere. He hung his hed in remores. 

_"You came at a bad time didn't you, my boy?_" 

Link's breath left him, startled. "....Rauru?" 

_"In the flesh....although not in one piece..."_

Link spun slowly about, his jaw dropping as he regarded the pool of crimson death about him. "But...those monsters...they--" 

_"Merely the dreams and hopes of Hylian kind, they were, dear Link," _said Rauru's voice. _"They come in all sorts of shapes and forms...but, sadly for you..you had to see the ugliest..."_

Link knelt down, running a nervous finger through the currents of blood. "How can you be talking to me? You're barely tangible flesh..." 

"_Where the flesh dies, the soul goes to live elsewhere in agony," _Rauru spoke on. "_That is the sad case for most souls...who take the wide road rather than the thin. People have long held strongly to their lusts...to their demonic wishes and dreams. And look what it's now spawned."_

__"I don't like it at all," Link said standing up. "But I guess I'll see more of it?" 

"_That you will_," Rauru's voice replied. "_For you are still young. I've lived many a long year...and I've seen many a gruesome war. I've archived so much of the horrid and the violent...I'm amazed I kept my sanity so long."_

"And what of my sanity?" Link asked, noting that the screams and crimson of the hellish land were melting to a cold blue darkness around him. "How will I keep mine in tact?" 

"_Better write your mind down, my boy,"_ Rauru warned...his voice growing ever more distant. "_Because otherwise, your mind will be clear and void. Just like a book...and if there's a book with no title...and not author....and no lines to fill it up...who would actually read it?"_

"I've been wondering that myself lately," Link muttered. 

"_Wonder no more....."_

****************************************************************************** 

_And the hatred of men showed itself to the hero in the present..._

****************************************************************************** 

BOOOM!!!! 

Link shook as a bomb blew off right behind him. He ran over to the side, soon founding himself in what seemed like an open plain of rock and dust. Almost in a nonstop basis, the sky lit up from bursts of light everywhere. Shouting voices of deep-throated entities entered the atmosphere. 

Link ran and peered over the crest of a mount of rubble. He saw swarms of Gorons running across the land...armed with spears, bombs, and iron fists. A literal war was occurring right in the valley! 

BOOM!!! 

Link shuddered as another nearby explosion rocked his world. He rushed out into a trench and found a company of Gorons running his way. 

"Hurry hurry hurry!" the captain of the Goron militia yelled "This way! The enemy's this way!" 

Without asking, Link ran with them. He became a soldier moving with the flow. An underlying beat of war drums set fire to his heart and sent adrenaline of fury and vengeance soaring through his arteries. Shells went off left and right. Fires shot out with fireworks in the air. Every now and then, a wounded soldier fell down dead or dying. Catapults unleashed their might. Bombs went off without pretense. 

And in all the chaos....Link, for the life of him, could not see any sign of the enemy.... 

"Brother! Over here! Duck!" 

Link obeyed the strong voice and dove over into a trench, lying belly-flat in the dust besides a large Goron leader who turned out to be none other than... 

"Darunia!" Link exclaimed. 

"Stay low! We got them cornered!" Darunia growled, peering through a telescope at the land beyond. "Dang idiots think they can keep us on the run...well, here's our reverse-psychology, brother!" 

"Who are we fighting?" Link asked. 

"Does it matter?" Darunia grumbled. "As long as we defeat them!" 

"I think you've gone nuts!" Link exclaimed, a shell going off nearby and sending the bodies of many hapless Gorons screaming into the air. 

"Nuts or not, we're taking out the enemy!" Darunia sneered. "They'd better not pick another fight with Big Brother!" 

"Just what use is a nameless enemy?!" Link asked. 

"You can't leave an enemy unscathed!" Darunia exclaimed. "Even if it is nameless! It's like comparing an enemy to a black book. If it's nameless....has no possession....and no content whatsoever...nobody reads it! But it's still there...and it can still cause damage!" 

Just then, the streaming sound of a thundering force was heard from overhead. 

"GET DOWN!!" Darunia yelled to Link and all the Gorons present. 

SHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM-POOOOOOWWW!!!! 

Dust and debris thundered upward as a comet streaked down from the sky, plowing away a huge section of the earth. 

As the rumbling and dust settle, Link stood up, brushed himself off, and looked to find a deep, dark crater in the center of a thunderstorm. Darunia and all the other Gorons immediately stopped fighting...mesmerized by the sight of what suddenly lay before them. 

And, strangely enough...within the center of the crater was a small...wooden shack. It was dark...depraved...and surrounded by bursts of rain and lightning. 

And....for the oddest reason, Link felt the need to explore it. "I'm going in there." 

"But brother...wait!" Darunia placed a hand on his shoulder. "What if the enemy's in there?" 

Link frowned and removed the Goron's hand. "Then that's a chance I'll have to take...." 

Despondent, Darunia watched as Link lowered himself into the crater...and took the long stroll down towards the center...towards the wooden house. Lightning struck, thunder roared, and a heavy shower of water came down on Link's figure. But he pressed on. For some odd reason...what was in that house was important to him. He had to open it...he had to find a solution to all of this mess. 

After a while, he reached the door. It creaked and literally fell open at his touch. A little startled, he recollected himself, took a breath, and stepped in. 

Smoke. 

Link gasped. He remembered the smoke from the beginning of his trip. If indeed it was in that little shack...then he possibly may have been near an end. Or was this all one big, giant loop? 

Carefully, he strolled forwards. The inside of the place looked like a barn of some sort. He couldn't make out any sense of it. Skultulla webs....dust....shattered glass. Nothing seemed important. 

He was about to leave when he suddenly heard her voice... 

"I was wondering if you'd ever show up..." 

Link glanced over...and to his shock sat the one element of his life that he had not yet seen in his odd journey. 

"Zelda...." 

The princess nodded back...an angelic visage within the center of that dusty nightmare. Oh, she was pretty. And pretty depressed-looking too. Hardly a smile exited her lips...only a staid deadpan. 

"Zelda...are you the center of all this?" Link asked. 

"It depends, Link," Zelda spoke back. "Am I the center of you?" 

Link froze. How could he answer that? 

"I know I'm not," she went on. Depressed, she looked over at the lower corner of a wall. "There's no use in me waiting here for you after all...." 

"Now Zelda...," Link broke in. He sighed to collect his thoughts and then continued, "I don't know where you're coming from here. But what I do know is that you're being far more depressed than I've ever known you!" 

"Happy? Is that the way you want me to be, Link?" Zelda asked. "Happy...like Malon? Sweet and charming? Or in touch with her brain, like Ruto?" 

"I've never wanted anything out of you except for you to be yourself, Zelda!" Link exclaimed. "You know that." 

"But how much of me knows that, Link?" Zelda asked. "The part of me that lost her father to Ganondorf's hands? The part of me who suffers each day in trying to take care of the country? The part of me who is too bumped out of normality and my youth to possibly get to know anybody?" 

"Zelda.....," Link breathed. "....what are you saying?" 

"I'm saying that THIS IS THE WAY YOU SEE ME, ISN'T IT?!" and as she screamed, wrappings came in out of nowhere and went about her figure. In a brilliant flash of magic, causing Link to glance away, she was transformed into Sheik. "Mysterious? Out of touch? Out of your ring of conversation?!" 

"Zelda, no!" Link exclaimed...crawling forward and holding Shiek's hands in his. "Don't do this to yourself! You're a princess...you deserve better!" 

"A princess?!?! A PRINCESS?!" Shiek cried out. Then the being moaned loudly, rocking the shack and sending splinters falling down on the two of them. Link tried to provide as much shielding as he could to her and himself. 

"Zelda..please...stop!" he cried. "Stop hurting yourself!" 

"The truest pain comes when you fail to reveal who you are to someone else!!" Shiek wailed. Her body morphed into darkness...and ebony whisps of smoke came forth from her being. "And then you're nothing but the wind!" 

"You're not just wind to me!!" Link cried out, grabbing at the black air as it began to rise up and out of the shelter. "Zelda...come back!! Please! I....I need you!" 

"It's too late for intimacy!" she cried out...melting into a mere sob. "...it is the invisible lines that noone reads....." 

And Link screamed, "NOOOOO!!" He jumped up and flew with the last traces of smoke. "I will not have it!! With all my might...I shall write my own book!!!!!" 

And into the vortex of darkness he was dragged...through the smoke...and out of the cyclone of mystery. 

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

Light drops of rain pattered across the hero of time's face. Slowly, his eyes fluttered open...and he slowly sat up to greet a shepherd boy, looking quite oddly at him. 

"You were sleeping here for quite a while, mister," the boy said. "I saw your sword and all...and figured you needed to be off somewhere saving something. So, I decided to wake you." 

Remembering where he was...just on the edge of the Lost Woods, Link woozily rubbed his eyes and said, "Indeed. Although I am sorta on vacation now, I just fell asleep here...I think. Strange dreams you can have, too." 

"Well, as long as you're okay, mister," the boy said and scampered off back to his flock. "Ta-ta..." 

"So long," Link waved. His eyes suddenly adjusting, he gave a great deal of thought to the dream he had just been through. Never before had he experienced a vision so grand and graphic as that. And it correlated so much of his companions..that surely it meant something! 

He looked down at the book lying in the grass...slightly soiled by the light sprinkles of wet rain coming down. It was a new book....a blank book. Something that Zelda had given him for his birthday. 

A journal. 

Link had sat there in the grass that evening and was just about to delve into his first page when he started thinking of a funny thing. What if all of his friends kept journals? Would they then be able to express the secrets of their hearts that only they knew? But what if nobody kept journals...but just mental books without titles? 

Suddenly finding an intriguing evaluation to his vision, Link gasped in light of a new thought. He got up, stuck the book in his pouch, and made his way, running, to North Castle. 

**** 

"Anything else, milady?" asked one of Zelda's many royal handmaidens. 

The beautiful princess of Hyrule turned around, gave her a quaint smile, and said, "No...that'll be all...thank you..." 

The handmaidens bowed and left Zelda in her bedchamber...where the rain was running down smoothly over the glass windows. Just as Zelda was sitting by her bedside to read, a guard strolled halfway in the door and announced: 

"Your majesty....Link, the hero of time, wishes to speak with you." 

Immediately, Zelda put down her novel. "Certainly," she beamed with an elegant calmness. "Send him in..." 

The guard concurred and walked out.....and in walked Link...slightly drenched by the afternoon's weather. 

Zelda giggled at the sight of him, "My...don't we look like we had one too many wrestling matches with an octoroks..." 

Link blushed and smiled, "Err...I came here for an important reason, princess." 

"It's 'Zelda', Link," the princess smiled and offered him a place to sit by her on the edge of the seat. He sat beside her and played with his cap in his hand. 

"Have you enjoyed the journal I gave you for your birthday?" Zelda asked. 

"Um...er..what? OH! Yes...uh..yes, I have," Link simpered. "Certainly. But...that reminds me of just what I wanted to say..." 

"And what's that?" Zelda asked with a playful tone in her voice. Her smile left and she was taken by surprise when Link went out and held her royal hands in his wet palms. 

"I'm glad that.....although you might not openly say it, you've chosen me to be your closest friend," Link said. His voice shook a bit, but he gained enough composure to continue. "You've been through so much, Zelda....you've lost so much...suffered so much....and...don't ask how, but I know...I know that deep within your heart is an extra-large void. A void that, although large, you try to ignore each day of your royal life. But whenever I'm in the room with you, I see you shed a little bit of that void every day....just in a negative twinkle in your sparkling blue eyes...or in a way your bite your lip when talking of the Imprisonment War. 

"Zelda, I've seen this in you for a while now. But I've never had the strength to come right out and mention it, for I always thought that you, as the princess....was entitled to say it first. But...the truth is....you're lonely. And you desire friendship. And the only friend you have is me, and as strange as it sounds...you're the best of all my friends. 

"And, as you've been wondering all this time, Zelda. The answer is 'yes'. Yes, Zelda.....I do love you." 

Silence. 

Zelda stared at him. It took Link a while to gain the courage to look her straight in the face, but when he did...he saw her streaming with tears. 

"L-Link....," she stammered. "...y-you....y-y-you read my mind. H-how...how....Oh Link!" They hugged dearly, her sobs resonating against his body and his tears running down to her clothed shoulders. "I-I've wanted to tell you so long, Link. But I was afraid. I'm s-s-so lonely...I need you...I need you to get me back on track again....and I love you too..." 

"I-It's good to talk about these things, Zelda," Link said, smiling a bit...his moist eyelids clenching close. "In fact...it's important that we bring our deepest and most needy feelings into the open for our friends to help us. Otherwise, they may grow claws and form deep scars in our relationships...and in our hearts." 

"But...how did you know?" Zelda's breath shuddered in mixed-ecstasy and sweet sorrow. 

"I should not have been ignorant to outlook it in the first place, Zelda," he said. "And I'm an idiot for that. But it took a vision...an intense vision in my sleep to get it out of me." 

"To get what out of you, Link?" Zelda asked. 

Link looked over her shoulder and at the current of water of the rain against the outside windows. "The truth, Zelda. The truth that each person...each soul...is a book. And when we lay our feelings out in the open...and we give them no name...and we give them no author....and we give them no description.....who will actually read them..........?" 


End file.
